by Laura Falin posted in Life

I'm sorry.
I had a chance to see Tully in advance and I need to tell you about it, but I can't do that fairly without giving away the entire plot. So I'm going to spoil the heck out of this film. You've been warned.
I remember being a new mom. I remember the struggle it was to get out of the house and see a movie with my friends. If I had the energy and time to meet up for a night out, I just wanted to escape. I wanted to laugh, and not think too hard, and come home feeling good. I would have gone to Tully, which I've seen  widely advertised as a comedy, expecting to see a funny, relatable, very raw portrayal of motherhood. And parts of it were.
But I left feeling unsettled.In Tully, we see Charlize Theron as Marlo, pregnant with an (unplanned) third baby, looking worn down and very, very tired. We see her trying to be and do the things each of her children need. And it is so completely relatable and exhausting I wanted to cry. When the baby is born, we see Marlo sporting the mesh hospital underwear, and arguing with the nurse about whether she peed enough to be able to go home, and, in one scene that haunts my nightmares, we see her accidentally tip over a bag of newly pumped breast milk (I yelled, "Nooooo!" in the middle of the theater.)
We see Marlo trying to come to terms with her post-baby body. There were a few times I laughed out loud at exactly how right the filmmakers got those early days of having a new baby at home withou...